Brink Alexis - The art of Jin Shin: the Japanese practice of healing with your fingertips

Praise for Alexis Brink and the Art of Jin Shin

Having watched Alexis interact with clients from a diversity of backgrounds over the three decades we have known each other, I have always been impressed by her gentle confidence and natural inquisitiveness. A true healer who knows and implements both the science and art of medicine, she has always impressed me by her desire to break new boundaries and think beyond ordinary paradigms.

Deepak Chopra, MD

For years, Jin Shin self-help has been my saving grace, pulling me and even my bandmates through a range of crises, from food poisoning on a twelve-hour flight to South America to a flu passing through our band bus. Once one becomes empowered by Jin Shin self-help, life starts afresh!

Maria Schneider, Grammy Award winner and leader of Maria Schneider Orchestra

The Art of Jin Shin is an energetic healing modality that is a powerful complementary practice to Western medicine.

Maurice Preter, MD, integrative neuropsychiatrist

The Art of Jin Shin is a powerful self-help tool that can be extremely helpful for dancers, as the unblocking and release of energy can aid in injury prevention and more rapid healing of injuries.

Nikki Feirt Atkins, founder and producing artistic director, American Dance Machine for the Twenty-First Century

I have been seeing Alexis Brink for over fifteen years, and whenever Im in New York City I make sure to get a treatment. I always leave a session more energized, yet calmer, and am better able to go about my day in a peaceful, joyful state. Alexis is a first-rate healer/practitioner and I highly recommend her to anyone suffering with a particular health issue or anxiety issue, or those who simply want to be at their optimal level of being!

Debbie Gibson, singer, recording artist

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This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

The author and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

Copyright 2019 by Alexis Brink

The names of some individuals in this book have been changed.

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First Tiller Press trade paperback edition June 2019

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Interior design by Joy OMeara

Cover design by Liza Aelion

Cover photography by Marieke Feenstra; Calligraphy by Seikou Kaneko

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-3093-0

ISBN 978-1-9821-3094-7 (ebook)

To my children, Mara and Tyler Hutton, with unconditional love. In memory of my omasCarolina Venhof, the first person to believe in my path, and Hadasse Abram, whom I unfortunately never had the chance to meet. Gratitude to my mentor Philomena Dooley.

BY ELIZABETH CUTLER

I came to the Art of Jin Shin at twenty-one through Daniel Tucker. Daniel and I had recently both moved to Telluride, Colorado, where he was starting an art school called Ah Haaas in that moment when we know we get it. I was a recent graduate of the University of Colorado, starting my first job as the receptionist in a real estate office.

By that time I had already developed an interest in practices that allow our bodies and beings to feel their best naturally. My best friend had died of cancer in high school, and her suffering led me to ask myself what else was out there. The medicines available at that time made her more sick than she already was, and I felt a deep yearning to explore and learn more. One that would not go away. One like I felt before my partner, Julie Rice, and I started SoulCycle.

I took off from college in Boulder to do my junior year abroad, living in a monastery in India to focus on meditation and traveling to Taiwan to study tai chi and herbs, figuring that these various ancient teachings would give me some answers.

The experiences were rich, and I learned a lot, but something was still missing.

You go around the world to come home again was a phrase Julie and I always used when we were in search of an answer in our SoulCycle business and found it right under our noses. It happened frequently, so much that we would laugh about it.

That is how I felt after my third Jin Shin class in Telluride. Jin Shin Jyutsu is a magical, somewhat esoteric form of energy medicine that Daniel had studied for many years with Mary Burmeister, the Japanese-American woman who brought the practice to the US. The schools introduction of Thursday night self-help classes intrigued me. People showed up at 5 p.m., setting up cots to work on one another using a book Mary had written and compiled from her studies with her teacher, Jiro Murai. In that book, as in this one, there are ways to hold places on your own body, and other peoples bodies, to help restore energetic pathways that become blocked by everyday living.

We started each class by putting our hands under our armpits, reaching the back of the scapula with our fingers while our thumbs faced up on the front sides of our bodies. We dropped our shoulders and began breathing thirty-six times, noticing at the end of those breaths whether we felt differently now than we had thirty-six breaths ago. The answer was yes, always yes. Sometimes a big YESSSSS, and sometimes a smaller yes.

By simply placing our hands and getting out of the way in order to allow the source of life to come through us, we could become a jumper cable for our own bodies, or for someone else. (I know this sounds crazy, but we all have this source energy running through our bodies and its okayjust try some of the simple holds featured in this book, and I promise that youll feel it, too.) We could be a jumper cable for our own body or someone elses, and use a series of holds on specific energy locations to unlock the incredible, ancient wisdom of the Art of Jin Shin.